Category Archives: flipped classroom

When I attended school we had number 2 pencils, college ruled lined paper and very heavy books. My son, now in the 9th grade, has an iPad with interactive eBooks and apps and a Learning Management System (LMS) called Sch oology.

There are some other amazing tools, too, and I plan to write entries on some of them in other posts. In this post I am going to discuss Schoology. There are other LMS solutions available. Schoology is the LMS used by my son’s school and it is one of the most popular ones available. Schoology is a free web-based learning management system (LMS) built on a social network. The “free” may have something to do with its popularity, but many schools are opting for the paid iteration for its additional features.

So what the heck is an LMS and why do schools use them?

Think of ERP and CRM in businesses — big applications that put out tentacles into all the various departments to link processes together for efficiency. That is precisely the thinking being LMS for schools. Students who login to Schoology through the internet (browser) or through an iPad app see a list of their classes and assignments which may be due. Teachers can upload assignments for the students to access, and the student can do the work in an app on the iPad and then choose to save it to the Schoology “dropbox” (a cloud storage area) where the teacher can retrieve it. No more lost homework!

No excuse of “I forgot what my homework was” either.

Students can also share files and create messages (ala Facebook) on a school topic for discussions.

A nosy mom (like me) can check to see what my son is assigned and if he has turned it in yet.

Like this:

For years the name of this blog has been “Making Money with Technology.” It’s time for a change. For some reason I hear the voice of the Doctor (from the TV show “Doctor Who“) saying “Change — and not a moment too soon”!

My most recent post, which was on the topic of using iPad apps in schools to replace books, made me realize that the title is not only too limiting, but also a bit outdated. Technology is indeed a money making proposition, but somehow it has become far more than that. Technology is no long “what we use” (for work or fun) or even what we sell — it has literally become part of who we are.

Can you imagine your day without your cell phone? Voice mail? Instant news via Twitter? Apps? Games? Even your love life has most likely been touched by technology. Statistic Brain says that of the 54 million single adults in the United States 40 million of them have tried online dating! 20 million belong to eHarmony alone!

I’ll still post about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and how to make money with technology — but the focus of the blog is much broader than that. Technology touches every aspect of our lives in amazing and even somewhat scary ways (the pace of technological change seems to ever increase).

For example (and it will be the topic of my next post) technology is literally flipping (reversing) the way students are being taught in schools. Our traditional method of a teacher giving a lecture with passive students taking notes is literally going out the window. From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Common Core and Virtual Schools — the educational world is undergoing massive change.

Please feel free to email me or add your comments if there are specific subjects you’d like to see discussed. As Bette Davis once said (in the movie “All about Eve“) “Fasten your seat-belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”